6 ms·
BCC was originally a bit of a purple cow, which is interesting to the HN community because it overlaps programming/business but different than the vast majority
by patio11 11y ago
BCC was originally a bit of a purple cow, which is interesting to the HN community because it overlaps programming/business but different than the vast majority of what is on HN because it's the aggressively un-startup startup. Publishing sales numbers before that was common probably helped a non-zero amount, too.
Many HNers feel a sense of personal investment in me, because HN has been my home-away-from-home for ~7 years now and I am a "local boy who made good."
I write decently and have a strong written voice which people like.
A relatively small fraction of what I write is immediately useful to people.
Also: I write a lot. My published output is something on the order of ~3 million words, roughly ~2 million of which are on HN. (Give or take 500k or so. It's been a while since I ran the script and I don't have a few hours to wait before bed.) That's roughly Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and Game of Thrones... combined.
There: that's the whole secret. Use these dark magicks responsibly.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- radicality 11y agoNot sure how to quantify this, maybe by number of upvotes, but is some kind of a 'bestof' of things you have written on HN?
- 1123581321 11y agoHere are his comments ranked by upvotes: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=author:patio11&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=author:patio11&sort=byPopulari...
- mangeletti 11y agoThat service doesn't even come close to functioning properly. Search for your own name and you'll see what I mean.
- 1123581321 11y agoI don't see it. It returns as many results as the API for patio11 (and for my username as well.) https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/user/patio11.json?print=pretty https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/user/patio11.json?prin... I don't know about Patrick but Algolia correctly sorts my highest comments, too. What number are you expecting from patio11's results that you're not seeing?
- timv 11y ago[Not the OP] I can't say whether it's FireBase or Algolia that's at fault, but my HN search results are definitely wrong. It look like it doesn't have anything from the past year? But maybe there are other issues too. When I hit this, the top comment has a score of 12 https://hn.algolia.com/?query=author:timv&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=author:timv&sort=byPopularity&... That means it's missing all of these (and probably more) * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11084278 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11084278 * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11077893 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11077893 * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11070269 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11070269 * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10921709 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10921709 * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10906050 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10906050
- akkartik 11y agoI think votes on comments stopped being public around that time? So HNsearch probably sees all more recent comments to have 0 votes.
- b_emery 11y ago2e6/(7x365) = 782 words per day every day. That is a Huge amount of writing.
- imrehg 11y agoFor what it's worth, it's actually surprisingly manageable. I've been doing "750 Words" for a while http://750words.com/ http://750words.com/ and writing that much mindlessly is about 13 minutes. Writing that much thoughtfully is probably a lot of thinking on the side plus 30-40 minutes. I think it needs a lot less work than people think, but a lot more than people are willing to put in by default.
- Bluestrike2 11y agoThat's... prolific. On a very unrelated note, are you the same patio11 who was a parli debater a while back? I've seen your username across HN before but never drew that connection until now. Assuming that's the case, I've got a really embarrassing question for you. I remember reading a comment of yours on Net Benefits years ago on critiques (I think it was about how some critiques more or less used the subject as a one-dimensional cutout to haul out in the middle of rounds and stick back in the box when done) and you talked about a Japanese phrase that meant something along the lines of "wallflower" (?) in that context. I searched for that comment a few times, but never could find it again. It drove me up a wall in a few rounds because it was always on the tip of my tongue but I couldn't remember. Then it didn't matter after my school decided to screw up our debate program, but it was one of those dumb little things that continued to bug me. Any chance you remember what I'm talking about, now that the annoying itch to know has come back? :)
- patio11 11y agoWow, that's a blast from the past. Yep, that is indeed me. I don't remember the specific post about kritiks, but the word I probably used was "sakura" in the sense of "a human prop." Sakura are, in the Japanese theatre tradition, confederates who you place in the audience with instructions to be vocally demonstrative at particular points in the play. This is to get the rest of the audience to join in. They're not actors but they are deployed to make the actors look good.
- Bluestrike2 11y agoHa, same for me. It's crazy to think about how much time debate took up back then. Blast from the past is right. Anyhow, thanks for the explanation. I liked the analogy back then, and I still do now that I know the term :).
- HeyLaughingBoy 11y ago...and a fairly large corpus of posts on the Business of Software forum when it was still popular. A huge thanks to Patrick for reminding all of us to Raise Our Rates. I've still yet to bill above $200/hour but I aim to have an effective "rate" well beyond that soon.
- gadders 11y agoI think one of the best things about BCC was it broke out of the "software developers creating products for other software developers" cycle.